


End of the World Theatrics

by tabulaxrasa



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-15
Updated: 2011-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-19 10:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabulaxrasa/pseuds/tabulaxrasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fate or Chance. Truth or Consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End of the World Theatrics

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between Je Souhaite and Requiem. I actually wrote this before Season 8 started, but post-This Is Not Happening it works even better. That frightens me.

She is going to have to die tonight.

She cannot bring herself to accept that this is the end. That it ends like this, here, today, tonight. She is dizzy and light-headed. She is knocked off her feet, too shocky to rage against the dying of the light. Somewhere inside her, grief and panic are struggling to get out, to escape and shatter in an explosion of tears and a scream that won't end. End-of-the-world theatrics.

She remains silent and dry. Knowing even as she does that this is how it will be for the rest of her life. She will walk around with this scream inside her, afraid it will get out. She feels the rage coming, but another wave of buzzing dizzy overtakes her and it is all she can do to remain upright. She is ready to beg and plead now. Please don't. Please. Please.

Don't kill me and don't kill him, or kill us both quickly and be done with it. Don't leave him dead with me still alive. It's not supposed to happen this way. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Please don't.

They do.

She breaks.

 

They found her on the ground, near her partner. He was dead. She would not live.

* * *

They are in an airport. She is fairly happy. Mulder knows this because she told him so last week, and, if anything, she is more happy now. He makes her happy, and this makes him ecstatic. She remains his reason for ever existing, and he has never enjoyed existing more.

But soon, he thinks, soon it will be better. She doesn't know this yet, and it makes Mulder hum with anticipated joy.

Scully sits next to him in the standard airport chairs, wearing an indulgent smile. If it were any other time but now, she would be tired and impatient. But it is now, so she wonders instead about the chairs, if there's one company that makes the chairs for all the airports. She wonders about it without wondering if the company is run by a bunch of sadistic bastards. And she smiles at Mulder, because it makes him happy, and she can make him happy now.

He takes her hand in his. Mulder is smirking at the people going by, because he knows what they do not. Soon it will be even better.

XXX

Now Mulder and Scully are in another airport, but this one involves baggage collection instead of sitting and waiting. The airport is in Indianapolis. It is a case. Two men were attacked, one died by strangulation, one is barely hanging on in the ICU--but no fingerprints, no marks, no signs of a struggle. The ME couldn't find anything. Their larynxes were crushed from the inside. They have seen this before. Mulder already has his theory. Scully already has her rebuttal. They are unconcerned. Their version of open and shut.

They rent a car and drive straight to the crime scene. They flirt.

"So...what?" Scully asks, stretching in her seat. "Is it psychokinesis or ghosts?"

He grins. "I dunno yet. That's what we're here to find out. Say that again."

"What?"

"'Psychokinesis or ghosts.'"

XXX

The deceased man is Fernando Hernandez, 30 and the one still alive is Jesus de la Torre, 32. "From Ibague, Columbia" Mulder continues reading. "No visas, they're in the country illegally. Suspected drug dealers. _Los malos hombres._ Hey, Scully, does my Spanish accent turn you on?"

"I don't know. I haven't heard a Spanish accent."

"Oh, that hurts Scully."

The apartment the men were found in is a hovel, naturally. One with a very nice 42" projection TV and 5 disc DVD changer.

"Damn," Mulder mutters appreciatively. "I hope they had insurance."

The apartment, such as it is, still smells like death. But so does the hallway. They were found by chance when the landlord came in to see if the leak in the apartment upstairs had damaged anything.

Mulder becomes depressed, thinking about how many crummy apartment buildings they have seen. He idly wonders what color house Scully would prefer. Maybe not paint at all, but brick. Yeah, he can see her in a big brick house, with white trim and those double doors, and big green leafy trees around it.

They split up to interview the neighbors. Mulder hates that. It makes his chest and throat ache, now, and he worries about her, when he didn't used to. As much.

* * *

He has been sitting in the waiting room of the emergency room for eternity. He is furious and grateful at the same time. He needs to see her again, make sure she is all right for himself, but he dreads having to see her. He doesn't know what to do with her after this, and is terrified she will have no use for him and send him away. That she won't meet his eyes, ever again.

Why did he leave her alone?

* * *

There were very few neighbors home to people dressed in suits, and they were headed toward the police station sooner then they expected.

The detective who greets them is naturally very grateful for their help before he has heard Mulder's theories.

Mulder smiles internally, in anticipation, since Detective Hope has such a white, straight smile he turns so frequently upon Scully.

 

Scully goes off to do the autopsy, and Mulder amuses himself with a bag of sunflower seeds, reading over the casefile. After a while, Mulder picks up a local newspaper out of boredom.

XXX

"Interesting crime wave, Detective" Mulder remarks when Hope checks on him.

A man had turned up dead in an ally, his girlfriend next to him in a coma, not a mark on her, not even an internally crushed larynx. The girlfriend had been a native, but the boyfriend had not. No suspects.

"Yeah," Hope takes a seat at the table across from Mulder and scratches the back of his head. "It's weird. Really weird. Do you think they're connected?"

This is not technically correct, it's more of a feeling Mulder has. All the better to try and make some connection based in fact now, before Scully hears about it. It has taken seven years, but Mulder is now well-trained.

"Is your department pursing the possibility of a connection?" Mulder asks.

Hope looks surprised. "Nope. Isn't that what you're supposed to do?"

XXX

Scully tends to be grouchy after autopsies until she is fed, so Mulder waits until she is contentedly shoving pizza in her face to tell her about the other murder.

"So you want to...what?" she asks cautiously, wiping the grease off her fingers with a brown napkin.

"Talk to the woman's family. Try to establish a connection."

Scully pops her neck in an alarming manner. "Mulder, if it was a random mugging, it's going to be pretty difficult to establish a connection."

Mulder scoots forward, excited. "But then what happened to the woman? Her doctors don't know what's wrong with her. Something out of the ordinary happened there. What do you think the chances are of two separate X-Files in one town at the same time are?"

Scully is intrigued by the medical mystery, he can tell. His hopes are up.

"We have to go to the hospital tomorrow anyway, to see de la Torre," he pushes. "We could just stop by Julia Nelson's room."

"Well," she gives in, "I didn't find anything with the autopsy, so I guess it couldn't hurt. Much."

XXX

His name was Darren Manchester, and hers was Julia Nelson. Mulder and Scully were given the files at the police station in the morning, and reviewed them over breakfast.

Julia Nelson was born in 1960, attended medical school at Purdue, and joined Doctors Without Borders in 1987. She had been stationed in Zaire until 1995, when she transferred to Columbia. She had recently returned home.

Darren Manchester was from Cape Cod. He was also a member of Doctors Without Borders. He had been stationed in Zaire from 1985 to 1995, when he transferred to Columbia at the same time Julia did. He left with her, it appears.

"That's the connection, Scully," Mulder starts bouncing in his seat with excitement. "Columbia."

Scully sighs. "There are a lot of people in Columbia, Mulder." But it's something, and she knows it. "Let's go talk to the family."

XXX

Scully is astounded when she reads Julia's medical history. She contracted Malaria in Africa, in 1989. In 1992, she very nearly died from sleeping sickness. Even more surprising, however, is that Julia was treated for violent assault and rape in New York City General Hospital in January of 1995, just before going to Columbia.

Scully feels sick.

The hospital is reluctantly able to provide her with Darren's history as well, and his is also bad. He contracted Malaria shortly after Julia finished her bout, and was shot in the left thigh by anti-government guerrillas in 1994.

XXX

Scully insists they see Jesus de la Torre first. He is a big, ugly man, accurately described by his last name, his first completely inappropriate; even the overwhelming tubes and machines of ICU can't disguise that. His throat looks undamaged from the outside.

The doctor tells them de la Torre isn't expected to recover. After studying his chart, Scully agrees. His brain was deprived of oxygen for too long.

XXX

They manage to find Julia herself, still in her mysterious coma, watched over by her younger sister, Kelley.

Mulder puts on the look he uses for victims and their survivors. "Ms. Nelson, I'm Agent Mulder and this is Agent Scully with the FBI. We'd like to ask you some questions about your sister and her boyfriend."

Kelley is defensive. "You don't think she did that to him, do you?"

"No," Scully says, surprised. "Why would you say that?"

"That's what the other cops thought. They wouldn't say so, of course, but it's what they were thinking."

"Ms. Nelson--Kelley--as far as we know, your sister is not under suspicion," Mulder says firmly.

"He wasn't her boyfriend," Kelley says finally. "I mean, she loved him, she was _in_ love with him, but she wouldn't admit it to me. It took her a long time to admit it to herself, I think. But he loved her, too. Everyone knew it. They were so obvious, so adorable..." she breaks off in pain for a few seconds. "If they were sleeping together, she didn't tell me. But she would never, never, ki--" her voice fails, physically unable to form the word. "Never. It would be worse then killing herself. I believe she's like this _because_ of what happened to him, because she saw it happen. Oh, god, Julia...." She returns to crying over her sister's body, swaying back and forth with the pain.

They turn to leave, but she stops them. "I loved him too," she explains. "I only wanted them to be happy. They deserved it."

XXX

Her mother sits at home in a dark house. "I was so proud of her" she says in near-whispers, after a while. "She was always so generous, so kind to everyone. It wasn't surprising that she wanted to become a doctor, to devote her life to helping other people, complete strangers." Her deep breath is shaky. "And then she joined Doctors Without Borders. Going off to help people she had no ties to whatsoever. 'They need someone,' she said. 'Anyone. I'm willing to do it. I *can* do it.' I was worried, of course." A familiar-looking bitter smile appears like a hallucination across her face. "So dangerous over there. And she did get hurt, and sick. But she met him, too. Eventually, he was the only thing she talked about. Every time something happened to him, it tore her up inside. All the time I was worrying about Africa, and then she comes back here and look what happens. New York...and now..." The mother sounds angry with herself.

"After everything they've done" she raises her voice, pleading for understanding, "after everything they'd been through, they deserved some rest and relaxation. All that hurt happened to them while they were helping other people. Why couldn't they have been happy, just for a little while? Why?"

She appears embarrassed by her outburst. She hides her face behind a kleenex. "Please excuse me" she whispers, and leaves the room. Mulder and Scully can do nothing but understand.

XXX

The Rule is: No Sharing of Beds Allowed On Cases, so he goes into her room and lays on her bed for the same reasons he always has. She is nearby, they both know the other is safe, and he can lay where she will lay that night.

They are quiet for a long time, lost in their thoughts. "They could be us, Scully" he says finally.

"What do you think, about the case?" she asks.

He flops back on her bed and stares at the ceiling. "I think Fernando Hernandez and Jesus de la Torre killed Darren Manchester. I think Julia Nelson watched it happen. There's only so much a person can take."

"You think Julia killed those men from her coma, Mulder?"

"You said it yourself, Scully. Psychokinesis."

XXX

"Good news!" says Detective Hope. "Columbian authorities finally got back to us! De la Torre and Hernandez were hit men for some Columbian drug lord. The thought is now that they were offed by some rival drug lord. You folks are free to go home."

"What about the cause of death?" Scully hates being told by anyone to go home.

Hope shrugs. "Some weird rainforest drug, maybe?"

Mulder and Scully both take a deep breath and count to ten.

XXX

Scully pushes limp, browning-around-the-edges lettuce around on her plate. They are still in Indiana. This has officially become a Bad Case.

"If de la Torre and Hernandez did kill Darren Manchester, why? What interest would a Columbian drug lord have in a couple of doctors?"

Mulder purses his mouth thoughtfully. "Maybe they saw something they weren't supposed to see, and someone wanted to make sure they didn't tell anyone about it."

Mulder's cellphone rings. Scully doesn't look up until she senses him tucking the phone back into his pocket.

"That was Detective Hope," he says, so she doesn't have to ask. "Jesus de la Torre died." Scully puts down the fork, glad to leave the salad behind.

"Let's go to the hospital."

XXX

They pass Kelley wandering in the hall. "Kelley?" Scully gently puts her hand on Kelley's arm. She looks confused.

"She died" Kelley sounds surprised by her own words, the sound of her voice.

"What?" Mulder exclaims, stepping forward. "Julia?"

"She just..." she waves her hand around limply in the air, "...died."

* * *

"There has to be end" he tells her. She looks at him, surprised. She doesn't believe it, nothing ever ends, but it's suddenly nice that he thinks so.

"What are you thinking?" she asks quietly, watching the light from the setting sun on his face.

He looks at her, very seriously. "I think we should end this" he tells her. "I think that you and I can be done with this now. I think we can go home."

She is afraid that he is leaving her, so she looks into his eyes, searching. That is not what she finds. He is not suggesting separation, but togetherness. Her vision is obscured by salt water, a reaction from the all the dust in the air, surely. She shudders, and they reach for each other.

* * *

"I think," Mulder says carefully, "I think that Julia was just waiting to make sure justice was served. When Jesus de la Torre died, she could move on."

Scully is only half-listening, staring out the window at the setting sun filling the sky with blood.

So they were killed for next to nothing. The murders had no understanding of whom they were killing, what these people had done, what they had been through. It was so pointless. Was life really like this? No matter how hard you worked and strived and fought for something more then yourself, for some greater purpose, none of it matters more then a splotch of mud on your tire treads, all that suffering. She thinks about Mulder in a car accident, killed by a drunk driver. It couldn't be chance. But to think that it's fate, that God thought this was right; that was frightening.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

"No" she answers, and he is overwhelmed. He has not had to deal with "No" before.

The break the Rule that night.

* * *

He holds it in and does not tell her, because it isn't time yet, after all. But soon. Soon, it will be better.


End file.
